1040: Determiners versus Adjectives Oct 14, 2017

Sometimes, explanations given to children about grammar are not exactly accurate. On the website linked to here for instance, it states that an adjective should be able answer certain questions pertaining to a noun: "What kind of noun is it? Which noun is it? How many are there?". Though sometimes these are applicable, at least for the very vague first two questions, many types of words have functions similar to that of an adjective but are not adjectives. Participles are among these types, but the focus today will be on determiner's; while adjectives describe the quality of a noun, determiners indicate the reference a noun has, such as 'every', 'that', or 'the'. However, determiners also include numbers, and possessives like 'my' and 'her', but also words that have the possessive suffix '-s' [3], like in "Beth's", even though it could be said that "Beth's" and 'two' in "Beth's two dogs" answer the questions of "which noun is it?", and "how many are there?". A good trick for those now unsure of what is an adjective or not is that they describe quality, and two-ness, for instance, is not a quality; indeed, no determiner can take the suffix '-ness' which adjectives can. More about determiners will be explained in he near future.